Knives with a deer horn handle were often used by the ancient Indians, and the blade was notable for its small length and curved shape. You can make such a knife with your own hands at home - as the main "raw material" will be used tool steel grade U12A, which is used for the production of manual cutting tools.
The main stages of work
The knife forging procedure in this case is classical - we heat the billet red-hot in the furnace, and then beat it with a sledgehammer on the anvil, giving it the desired shape. As a template, you can use the photo of the Indian knife you liked (you can easily find it on the Internet). After forging, we form the cutting edge of the knife on a belt grinding machine.
Then the blade must be hardened - again, the hardening scheme is standard: we heat the knife in the oven red-hot and lower it into a deep metal container with oil. After that, the final sharpening of the blade is done, the surface of the blade is processed in a solution of ferric chloride. At the next stage of work, we cut handles of suitable length from deer horns.
First, we drill a round hole in the handle, and then expand it with a special file. We fill in the hole with an epoxy diluted with a hardener, insert the “tail” of the blade and rewind it tightly with a strip of leather. Then we make a knife cover from a piece of leather. The entire process of manufacturing the blade can be seen in the video on the site.
